“The book is an emotional hodgepodge”
– The New York Times on Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, 1961

“This Salinger, he’s a short story guy… this book though it’s too long”
– The New York Times on Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, 1951

“It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards”
– The Atlantic on Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, 1867

“An absurd story, whether considered as romance, melodrama, or plain record of New York high life”
– Saturday Review on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, 1925

“Mr. Melville never writes naturally. His sentiment is forced, his with is forced, and his enthusiasm is forced.”
– New York United States Magazine and Democratic Review on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, 1852

“How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen capters, is a mystery”
– Graham’s Lady Magazine on Emily Bronte’s Withering Heights, 1848

“Dull, dull, dull in a pretentious, florid and archly fatuous fashion… repulsive”
– The New York Times on Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, 1958